Surprising advice from cardiologist

Just posting this as it really surprised me and thought I'd share in case anyone else is interested.

I've recently been seeing a cardiologist, who is on Tatler's top doctors list. I am overweight, with high blood pressure and basically said "I know I should eat less and lower fat, but I do find it really tough to stick to".

She told me that the 2 diets with the best clinically-reviewed, robust evidence of effectiveness and health benefits are firstly the Mediterranean diet and secondly, surprise surprise, low carb. I almost fell of my chair.

I've done low carb in the past, got disheartened by being told that is unhealthy, over and over again, by my GP, stopped and piled the weight back on.

Apparently the whole "a calorie is a calorie" thing is rubbish - some foods (nuts I think were one of them) don't appear to have any impact on weight even if 500 cals or so are simple added to the same person's diet daily, but sugar is usually the biggest problem for most people - and can have an effect on the brain similar (as seen in a functional MRI scan) to hard drugs.

I'm sure lots of people will disagree - but I thought it was really interesting...

Why the surprise?! This is not new news - most people who actually know what they are talking about have been saying this for around 10-15 years now, and Dr Robert Atkins, he of the much maligned, much ridiculed Atkins diet was a cardiologist himself.

Almost every current trendy diet now pushed as being the way to go, from Dukan to 5:2 fasting has its roots in low carb, low GI, paleo etc, and they can pretty much all be traced back to Atkins, even though they may differ slightly on their attitude to high fat intakes.

And lots of people will agree! Not just those living a low-carb lifestyle, but also those who have read the studies that show, more and more clearly, that dietary fat is not the cause of obesity and the related health problems. The newly-recognised villain is insulin. High insulin and wildly-fluctuating insulin cause all sorts of health problems. Cut out simple carbs, cut down severely on complex carbs, insulin stops fluctuating, body can get on with repairing itself and being a healthy body.

Congratulations on having a Dr whose finger is on the pulse (pun fully intended!), when it comes to new evidence that's piling up regarding the high carb, low fat diet recommended for the past few decades is damaging and wrong - and at odds to the diet we evolved to eat.

The "establishment" is very resistant, but interestingly there are some medical Doctors who a "gurus" trying to get the message across (paleo/primal/lchf).

If you chose to change the way you eat - those blogs have all the info you need to answer back anyone who tells you it not healthy to eat real, natural foods! Plenty of links to the science too, for anyone interested in reading about how carbs and fake fats screw up our metabolisms.

Iloveafullfridge, no! I think carbs are actually the work of the devil for a lot of people!

For people like me who simple can't cope with high glycemic carbs without going out of control (a physical not physiological response), And I think a LOT of people are like that!

Yes yes to the Lindt - 85%, a cocoa hit, not a sugar hit, fabulous stuff . I eat it every day (2 squares). I get many shocked looks and comments when I say I eat chocolate every day, and have double cream in my coffee every morning, aAnd fry my veg in butter or coconut oil... When asked how I've lost 6+ stone, people literally do not believe its possible to do this (with no calorie counting either!)

Yes... But I do think you've got it right wrt why 5.2 works - because you very much have to restrict carbs for 2 days, that has a very positive effect on insulin resistance and other metabolic markers, compared with 7 days a week of high carb... And the weight loss of course.

Lower carb all the time just does it better - especially for people like me who could not cope with the on/off carbs days without going carb crazy...

I restrict everything on fast days .... from Sunday lunch till Monday evening nothing but tea, then a pot of soup or an omelette then nothing till Tuesday lunchsame again Wednesday night till Friday lunchthen at the weekend eat what I like

And I have a couple of 'fat days' (days of chips and wine, I call them) to keep the metabolism ticking over. I've lost over two stone in 14 months (I'm going for the slowly slowly approach) and my energy and stamina have gone through the roof on low carb.

I agree- simply being more aware high carb diets (and especially diets with a lot of added simple sugars), can cause a lot of damage over time, and making relatively small changes will make a huge difference to health long term.

IMO, if you were to chose to do one thing, I make it "don't eat anything with added fructose (fructose, corn syrup, corn sugar, HFCS, glucose-fructose syrup, it has many names). Fruit juice too, is high fructose - eat the fruit, don't drink the juice.

That one simple move would put a lot of junk food and ready meals on the "no" pile! It's amazing what they put sugar into, and how much they add.